Living with Microsoft

“All too often the desktop operating system market is looked upon as some sort of epic struggle between Microsoft and Linux. This ‘versus’ mentality is fun to perpetuate, it is not helping anyone in the long run. Since it is clear that each party is going to be around for a long time, what is needed a bit of mannerly coexistence. While the name calling may persist, it is more important that efforts are made to enable the two operating systems to work together more efficiently than they do now.”

They cooperate with their partners, therefore your statement was blatantly wrong, even if it’s not what you meant.

Nice non-existant comment. The article is talking about Microsoft coexisting with Linux. Does Microsoft contribute to groups promoting collaboration and standards between the two? No. Now take your silly comments elsewhere.

They’re so blatantly wrong and biased, based on years of Microsoft’s track record, you really embarrass yourself.

Man utd won’t wanna lose to chelsea in a couple of weeks even though they’ve won the title numerous times. My point is that even though there maybe sparks on the pitch it’s not an excuse for the fans to fight.

Who says anything about making it free? I think lots of people would buy it, actually. The lack of MS Office on Linux is what keeps many of companies from switching at least part of their desktops.

I know *I* would buy it.

BTW, the idea that Linux people don’t buy software is a myth, and the fact that it is widely repeated doesn’t make it true. The fact is that a large proportion of Windows users (especially home users) don’t buy software either, but pirate it instead. MS makes money on corporate sales, and it would make money on corporate Linux sales. Meanwhile, companies buy low-end and high-end commercial software for Linux workstations: Maya, Piranha, Smoke, Photoshop (to be used with Wine…), Crossover Office…the market is there, despite the myth that it isn’t…

Of course MS would lose OS market share, but we were talking about making *genuine” goodwill gestures here, not meaningless ones like the ones that were listed in the OP.

They’ve provided it for Mac for a long time. In fact, they had MS Office for Mac before they did for the PC.

Please re-read what I originally wrote: we were talking about the kind of goodwill gesture that would have Linux users regain some trust with Microsoft, and so I gave one, and you haven’t provided any argument to the contrary.

I’m not arguing that MS is likely to do this (though it would not necessarily be a bad idea if they wanted to take some steam out of OpenOffice), or that it’s good for them considering their current focus on dominating the OS market. All I’m saying is that this is the kind of goodwill gesture that would warm up Linux users to MS. If you want to debate this, please stay on topic…

They’ve provided it for Mac for a long time. In fact, they had MS Office for Mac before they did for the PC.

Please re-read what I originally wrote: we were talking about the kind of goodwill gesture that would have Linux users regain some trust with Microsoft, and so I gave one, and you haven’t provided any argument to the contrary.

I’m not arguing that MS is likely to do this (though it would not necessarily be a bad idea if they wanted to take some steam out of OpenOffice), or that it’s good for them considering their current focus on dominating the OS market. All I’m saying is that this is the kind of goodwill gesture that would warm up Linux users to MS. If you want to debate this, please stay on topic…

Office on OS X poses little threat to Microsoft’s corporate dominance today, because OS X poses little threat to Microsoft’s corporate dominance. Today. Despite enterprise aspirations, Apple is predominantly a consumer or professional product, not an information worker-type enterprise/corporate one. So that’s incremental revenue with little risk of downside, almost like admitting those people aren’t going to buy Windows anyways. It was also strategic to repairing their public image after the anti-trust cases, and I believe it was originally part of their settlement with Apple to continue supporting OS X at it’s release.

Office on Linux would be a threat to Microsoft’s corporate platform dominance, since that is often cited as one of the biggest impediments to linux adoption by those corporate customers themselves.

Still, I’m of the opinion that “Plan B” does exist at Microsoft. If Linux manages to hit a certain saturation point in enterprises, and it doesn’t have to be a significantly large one, then I wouldn’t be surprised to see a linux port or even more likely, some sort of Windows-server based Office service with a linux client. Microsoft is an arrogant company, but they’re not a stupid one. If they start to lose traction in one area, they’ll reinforce in others. Ultimately they’re accountible to their shareholders, and they’ll be forced to react to a changing market, if that market ever manages to change.

I do think the winds of change are in the air and even MS is grudgingly realizing it’s no longer all about the OS, and Windows itself is being attacked on too many fronts. If push comes to shove, Microsoft will just leverage their existing areas of dominance (Office etc.) and the areas they’re trying to dominate (digital media, web services, data centers) and will ultimately and happily allow *nix or any other OS, or PDA, or SmartPhone etc. to perfom low-brow “client” duties. Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s that far fetched.

I doubt little will change today, but tomorrow isn’t all that far down the road…

If porting Office to Linux meant a lot of corporations would switch over [from Windows], where’s the incentive for Microsoft? It’s not *wrong* that they want to prevent that

Except that it is wrong. Companies should not be allowed to use a dominant market position in one sector to prop up their monopoly in another sector. In most other industries, such behaviour would be strictly prohibited by the regulator. For example, would it be reasonable for the only gas company in the area (or at least, the gas company upon which you rely) to say, “we will only supply you with gas if you also use us as your electricity supplier”?

Or to put it another way: imagine that the ruling had gone the other way 5 years or so ago, and that Microsoft had been split up, so that the OS and Office suites were made by completely separate companies. With the growing desktop Linux market, what reason would the new MS Office Corporation have for *not* producing a GTK version? They already have a Mac product, which arguably has less potential on the corporate desktop. A native Linux version would allow them to sew up the market and have all their bases covered.

I’d probably buy it simply for smooth interoperability with other people’s documents and to meet external requirements. Office is admittedly not particularly useful for my own research purposes, but the darndest thing happens: other people use it for almost everything. If I’m going to use a bloated, ugly program to interact with other people’s documents I would rather pay a few hundred dollars for the “real thing” with all of the necessary functionality that is bug-for-bug compatible than use OpenOffice, and doing so without using Wine would be great. Of course that doesn’t mean that there would be enough customers to cover development costs, and without any idea what those costs would be (it should be a rather significant amount, I would think), it’s hard to say if it’s worthwhile.

I’d consider it. OOo is pathetic. Seriously, it really is, it’s a constant irritation to me. Word isn’t magically amazing, but at least it doesn’t have different bugs making interoperability a total pain. And I just won’t ask 3-5 other people to switch off Word to OOo when I’m the only OOo user…

Well, actually, I pay a lot to MS yearly simply because it’s a required fee for my major, and so I’d likely get it through that program anyway.

They even don’t have to port MS Office. The real test for willingness to cooperate is opening .doc, .xls and .ppt formats. Which they won’t do because it will be the instand end to their monopoly, even if OOo is well behind usability-wise.

So no, they won’t cooperate where it matters most – small PR gestures in that direction will be enough for them.

Well, unfortunately Microsoft still tries to weasel out of making their closed protocols open, which they were ordered to do by the EU commission.

They are even willing to accept a mayor fine to avoid opening their protocols.

That is NOT what I call coexistence.

If they really mean what they say, they put all of those protcol specifications on the net for everybody to read, and a statement that they will not sue anyone for implementing that protocol, even if that implementation violates a patent they own.

The free software and open source communities always try to interoperate with everybody else, loads of protocols, both open and proprietary were implemented by FOSS. Microsoft has to bring their protocols, then FOSS can implement them.

Oh, puh-lease. Coexistence starts with respect. I see precious little respect among Linux enthusiasts for Microsoft or Windows.

Microsoft wont have the respect of the majority until they start acting like they want it. Currently, they behave like a wealthy capitalist entity. That’s a great thing, but it doesn’t make them any more respectable. Contrast with, say, Google, which is both wealthy *and* aims for geek mindshare proactively.

I see a lot more work going on in the Linux world than in the Windows world toward interoperability. To turn the respect argument around, how is interoperability to be achieved when Microsoft treats Open Source like a minor platform that they’re trying to suppress to buy time?

Did you read the first half of his post? Why would they respect Microsoft.

We’re talking about a company which gave its customers Windows 9x for years when NT was right there, it just wasn’t snappy like those Macs (don’t get me started on Mac before OS X, I’m not happy with them either).

They took Netscape out (thanks Microsoft, seriously, those guys were scum), and then just stopped working on IE (thanks again, there weren’t any bugs, *cough* address bar *cough* standards compliance) for years.

They just told retailers they shouldn’t sell PC’s without an OS. Why not? They’re actually going to investigate retailers for compliance with licensing, wouldn’t it be more cost effective to hire some programmers, fire some marketing, and make Windows worth $200?

They fought over ODF in Ma. Why? It was really hard to implement an ODF output filter? And WordstarExpressMega XYZ wasn’t?

They keep telling people Windows is cheaper because you don’t need as many admins. Guess how many admins runs Linux and probably aren’t happy with their bosses being mesmorized with the idea that they don’t do anything and can be gotten rid of?

They’ve helped mold a whole generation of users who believe their computer should work with them, and not vice versa. Do you know how annoying that is? Try explaining that something is a tool, and it’s supposed to tell you how to use it. Ever seen a bandsaw with 10 easy steps on the front? No! Because it’s dangerous. So is a PC and the internet.

That money they sent SCO a couple years back, yea, we all just loved that one.

Steve Ballmer.

Why would Linux users ever trust Microsoft? Seriously, the company is vicious. It eats its competition, spits it out, and extends what they’d done. Like that if you want, but don’t expect others to fall for it.

Linux folk should respect Microsoft the same way you’d respect a ravenous dog: Those teethe are dangerous.

Co-existance in technology starts with “show me the code” as with most everything else. “Respect” is a word which will be thrown all over and hardly ever meant, not that you could discriminate between the two.

Co-existance will start when Microsoft starts writing technologies to do it, and opening protocols to help others write those technologies.

This isn’t politics. Co-existance will be achieved when it works, not when someone says they’ll do it.

I have a lot of respect for many people attached to Microsoft Research. I even like a number of projects and products from various divisions. The company itself is too large and has done too many different things to expect anyone to have any particular fondness for it. It is an amoral corporation that is not simply willing, but is actively expected to sink to depths to provide wealth for its investors, that are simply not respectable traits in people. For that reason, it’s difficult to respect any such business in anything but the most superficial sense.

I think coexistence starts with realizing that neither party can cheaply extinguish the other, and that provoking hostilities will result in more harm for both than good for either.

WTF is respect? MS is a business, it’s not like a person that will get broken heart if someone calls Windows of Windoze… If it’s profitable to MS to cooperate with the Linux World, they will cooperate… If it isn’t, they’ll just find a way to get rid of Linux. Don’t worry about Bill’s feelings.

“it is Microsoft who doesn’t want to share the computing space with alternatives.”

Right and wrong, IMHO: *any* corporation try to share with others and at the same time try to not share with others; if the corporation think that sharing with others a certain thing (a piece of code, some specifications etc) an advantage for it’s earnings, it will allow it, otherwise will try to avoid it (patents, restrictive licensing, closed source, obfuscated code, price politics, FUD etc).

Some of those things are legal, some others not, and we all knows that MS had (and has) some serious troubles in many countries.

However unfortunately we may see many other examples of companies that defend with similar weapons their own interests, sometimes beyond what allowed by laws (see Sony rootkit), some others in a lawful way (but not less impacting for customers and alterative dealers, see how Apple closed the clone era and dealed the menace of BeOS).

Any big corporation has a little army of layers, and they are not there for nothing…

What could the OSS community do to get MS more interested in cooperating?

This post is full of sanctimonious garbage but very short on a practical solution.

How can Linux cooperate better than it already does with Windows – assuming that SMB, NTFS, DirectX, the Win32 APIs and all the new Vista APIs remain entirely closed, undocumented and subject to patents that effectively barr interoperability or re-implementation in the US at least?

I know we all would like to trust Microsoft, but any company or entity who has trusted Microsoft has just been burned. This has happened time and time again.

I suspect that Microsoft will get enough trust from the current generation of competition (Firefox, Linux, JBoss, etc.) that Microsoft will embrace, and then extend — one last time. I see the WPF as the trojan horse this time.

If Microsoft does use WPF as an embrace-and-extend tactic, however, I think this will be the last time they will get away with it. This would be the last bridge to burn.

I know we all would like to trust Microsoft, but any company or entity who has trusted Microsoft has just been burned. This has happened time and time again.

Here’s a little secret for you .. it’s not wise to trust Microsoft. In fact, it’s not wise to trust any business of marginal size that is out to make a profit – not Novell, not Readhat, not Apple .. nobody. The only exception this is if whatever you are trusting them for stands a good chance of making them a lot of money. In that case, you should be in good shape. Otherwise, run the other direction

The only time a business ever does the right thing is when it’s somehow more advantageous to them than doing the wrong thing, and the reverse is also true. If you ever wonder if a company will do the right or wrong thing, just look at which option stands to serve their best interest. For example, even if doing the wrong thing will earn them more money, you have to weight that against how much bad PR they’ll get for doing it. Bad PR is to corporations what kryptonite is to Superman

Nothing to see here. Perfectly uninteresting article. The whole Linux vs. Windows thing is BS (as been repeated for so long). If MS misses business opportunities, which they might with a late Vista, a young libre, technical and not very rich “western” generation and a rapidly growing “eastern” market, there will be opportunities for other projects or companies pushing Linux-based solutions. The apps, functionality and compatibility will come, if it is actually sought after. But there is no uniform Linux agenda for world domination, and thus no key-innovations to get to that goal. The beast is out there, and if it attracts enough developers to mutate into many different shapes (and it already has, more than any other OS), some of them will manage to survive. It’s evolution baby, and business.

Over the long run it would be smart for Linux developers to grow towards living with Windows. … stressing coexistence. The existing solutions for these problems, like WINE and Samba, can work well but…

No “buts” about it–WINE, Samba, OOo, and even little utilities like zip and unzip already work together very well to make it easy to “coexist” and “live” with Windows.

The notion that peaceful and respectful coexistence is possible is a complete fantasy. Companies like Microsoft (and thousands of others) compete in every way they can. Microsoft have always gone out of their way to beat all and any competition. Why are they suddenly going to stop now? Microsoft may be content to confine Linux to a couple of per cent of the desktop – enthusiasts who would probably never buy Windows anyway – but if it spreads further Microsoft are bound to get out the heavy artillery. Nothing personal, just business. They would do the same to Apple, Sun, Sony or anyone else.

As for the notion that Microsoft is opening up: they are currently locked in a bitter dispute with the EC precisely because they don’t want to open up by documenting their protocols so that third parties can interoperate better with Windows. Gestures are cheap, sometimes free. Follow the money if you want to see where Microsoft is going. It leads to a door labelled “DRM – Only Authorized Software Permitted”. I expect the Microsoft Linux Lab will help with any enquiries should it emerge that Linux and BSD are not sufficiently authorized.

When I read the phrase mannerly coexistence, I immediately thought of the StarTrek episode where the alien scorpion thingies took over human bodies and then claimed, “We only want peaceful coexistence.”

Now you are claiming even the possibility is a complete fantasy. OK, you may well be right. But you need an illustration. I hope I’ve provided that.

The bottom line is what drives corporations. Thus, large corporations can always be relied on to do whatever is in their self interest, or increasing the value to their shareholders. This is not a moral thing, or immoral thing, it’s amoral (in other words, morality doesn’t enter the equation).

Since the vast majority of Microsoft’s revenue come from the Windows and MSOffice lock-in’s, and all of MS’s other products are either money losers or generate a small percentage of their revenue, there is no way in hell MS is going to jeopordize their Windows and Office franchises. Thus, MSOffice on Linux, which could help jeopordize the Windows lock-in, won’t happen, at least not until there is enough Linux critical mass for the extra license gains from MSOffice on Linux to more than offset the potential loss in Windows licenses.

Another intriguing prospect is the idea that MS could license Win32 and .Net port to Linux. This way, they still have their MSOffice lock-in, and they still get revenue from Win32/.Net or Windows, with no real risk (selling both at the same price structure). And Linux gets a full implementation of Win32 (not the only partially compatible Wine or CrossoverOffice), for a fee that would be comparable to a license of full Windows. Then businesses and consumers could have their cake and eat it too. If they wish, they can migrate to full Linux, with full Win32, and enjoy the advantages of Linux coupled with the compatibility of Windows applications and hardware drivers. And MS still gets Windows-type revenue from licensing Win32, but without the massive development costs of developing, updating, patching, and supporting full Windows (developing Vista has been a massive headache for them). I suspect that due to the problems with getting Vista out, Windows has become too big and complex and bloated for MS to manage and they are looking for a long range strategy of getting out the OS kernel development business, but with still controlling/licensing the API. After all it was Gates that said that he who controls the API wins.

Perhaps that was what was talked about when Steve Ballmer (MS CEO) and Mathew Szulik (Red Hat CEO) had dinner in New York.

Another intriguing prospect is the idea that MS could license Win32 and .Net port to Linux. This way, they still have their MSOffice lock-in, and they still get revenue from Win32/.Net or Windows, with no real risk (selling both at the same price structure).

You do realise that mainsoft already does that; they have licenced the Windows source code off Microsoft and via their tools, made it possibly to recompile, with some small adjustments for compiler issues, to compile a Windows application and get it up and running on UNIX.

Remember IE and Outlook for Solaris SPARC? that was accomplished using Mainsoft; so right now, there is nothing technologically stopping Adobe, Corel or what have you from making their software available – what is stopping them is the lack of a good business case to justify the expensive and as a result bring in a decent ROI – ROI, that is the key word, if they’re not going to get a good return on the time and money invested into their product, then they’re simply not going to make the move.

Sorry, all the indicators so far points that Linux users aren’t willing to purchase software – mention Photoshop in the presence of a Linux zealot and he’ll scream at you, claiming that you don’t need ‘high priced software’ and give some extremely bad example of how GIMP is superior.

As for Microsoft, they simply don’t care about Linux on the desktop; from what I see, Linux desktop users are moving to MacOS X for their desktop needs – they get the UNIX features with access to mainstream applications like Microsoft Office; and as for Linux, it’ll simply be, like all UNIX’s, something that runs on the server, away from the eye of the public.

right now, there is nothing technologically stopping Adobe, Corel or what have you from making their software available – what is stopping them is the lack of a good business case to justify the expensive and as a result bring in a decent ROI

Given all the people that ask for these apps, given the OSDL polls that show that a lot of businesses want these apps on their Linux desktops, given the success of CrossOver Office, I’ll say what you say is just plain BS. Linux people already have to buy a license of Adobe/Corel/… products for Windows, and then spend again money to buy CrossOver Office or Cedega. And you have guts telling me these people would not rather pay for the native apps ? Where are the market studies made by these companies to know the ROI would not be good ?

Sorry, all the indicators so far points that Linux users aren’t willing to purchase software

Sorry, the success of CrossOver or Cedega is proof to the contrary.

What you say is true only when your “indicators” are Windows zealots or anti-Linux zealots, which seems to be the case for you.

mention Photoshop in the presence of a Linux zealot and he’ll scream at you, claiming that you don’t need ‘high priced software’ and give some extremely bad example of how GIMP is superior

And on Windows, most people will say you the same thing with Paint Shop Pro for example.

People like you want us to believe that only Photoshop exists and is good for everyone, and that everyone pays for it on Windows.

Perhaps in your world of pirate everyone has Photoshop, that’s not the case with any of my users. The price alone would make them flee.

As for Microsoft, they simply don’t care about Linux on the desktop

Of course, that’s why they funded a european fund to give huge discounts to prevent any Linux desktop deployment in Europe.

You’re just an unreliable source of information. Linux users that don’t care about MS are more aware of MS actions than you, due to most of these MS actions being against FOSS.

from what I see, Linux desktop users are moving to MacOS X for their desktop needs – they get the UNIX features with access to mainstream applications like Microsoft Office

Good, you are well mislead by your environment. Fortunately, you never understood what Free Software was about, nor why FOSS was on the rise.

Freedom is an alien thing to you (to MS too). I understand your view of Linux desktop though, if you think MacOS X is the solution : a somewhat very limited view with blinders.

and as for Linux, it’ll simply be, like all UNIX’s, something that runs on the server, away from the eye of the public

Keep your head in the sand, that’s good. If only MS could do the same and leave us alone …

I agree with you as well, there’s little chance of it happening – not now, at least. It could be conceivable in the future, if Linux continues to gain acceptance for example.

For now, however, MS’ entire PC strategy rests on control of its Office file formats, which gives it a near-monopoly on Office Suites, and in turn a near-monopoly on Operating Systems. Which is why, if the DOJ had really wanted to punish MS, they would have forced them to open these file formats, which have become de facto standards in the business world.

Oh, puh-lease. Coexistence starts with respect. I see precious little respect among Linux enthusiasts for Microsoft or Windows.

Did you read anything of what I wrote, or is this another one of your knee-jerk pro-Microsoft responses? I’ve never seen anything even remotely critical of Microsoft coming out of you. I’m sorry, but at this point I really believe that you’re an astroturfer.

Anyway, at the risk of repeating myself, the fact that Linux users don’t respect Microsoft is that MS has time and time again attacked Linux, spread FUD about it and tried to put all sorts of hurdles in the way of those trying to make Linux interoperate with Windows.

If Linux users have no respect for your employer, it’s because your employer was first in showing no respect to them. Period.

Plus using outdated software for the purposes of interoperating with other people’s files from new Office releases would be pretty pointless, and packages without task parity don’t alleviate interoperability concerns much either.

An “office suite” or even just a single program that doesn’t have equivalent and compatible functionality for each of the relevant components of Office that is necessary for one’s compatibility purposes. For example, perhaps one wants compatibility with PowerPoint (cringe), some random non-OO.org suite might not afford one such compatibility.

Why are all these articles written from the standpoint that Linux must cooperate with Microsoft and not the other way around?

Personally, I’d love it if windows was more compatible with standards that allowed interoperability, hell I’d probably even buy a copy of XP to upgrade my aging Win98SE and Win2k machines that I have to use for specific apps, this way I could run a linux box and windows box side-by-side instead of only using windows when I have to.

>Why are all these articles written from the standpoint that Linux must cooperate with Microsoft and not the other way around?

Great question, and one I never understood either. Linux is ALWAYS trying to be more compatible with Windows. It’s MS that ALWAYS tries to be incompatible with Linux for their own good reasons. The author talks about WINE, NTFS, porting of software, and SMB (although not mentioned by name). ALL of these are incomplete due to MS not cooperating with Linux, not the other way around. This article seems thoughtless and naive.

wrong to participate in an arms race with the Soviet Union here in the USA (and maybe they were right, given the enormous expenditures of money on weaponry), but at no time (on either side) was anyone proposing unilateral disarmament, taken seriously by either side. These people were looked at as crackpots at best and perhaps tools/spies for the other side at worst (which earned you a onw-way train ticket to a gulag). No one wins in a standoff (until one side implodes apparently), so to argue otherwise flies in the face of Human nature.

Linux, unlike Windows, was not designed to make money. It was designed to fulfill purposes as much open-source software is. It happens to fulfill many of the same purposes as Windows. As long as Microsoft feels their cash cows are threatened there will be spreading of FUD about switching to Linux and many other problems introduced by Microsoft to get in the way of interoperability.

The solution is not clear but that does not mean that one side or the other will stop. I think that some Linux tools have been ported to other operating systems just because they are open-source and this alone is enough to guarentee some interoperability. As has previously been noted, Windows source code will not offer the same degree of interoperability since it is closed source.

Put simply: Open standards are the way to go and as long as Microsoft supports open standards then there can be peace between them and the rest of the world. The minute Microsoft tries to lock people in to their way of thinking too much and third-parties such as Linux will appear just to stop them from getting their way.

The mentioned move are clearly geared towards positioning MS in the virtualization market. Virtual Server technology is not Microsoft´s they just bought Connectix Corporation a couple years ago and changed the name to the “Virtual PC” software. Their aim is making VMWare out of the game, thus making sure people don´t use Windows inside Linux easily.

Their Linux labs were just created to study the “enemy” and to clone Linux features inside Windows. Then again they will “extend” the Linux standards to make them out of the game.

Until the time comes when I see the following 4 things happening, any action from Microsoft related to Linux can be safely and automatically considered as a strategic move towards defending their market share against Linux and throwing the competition out of the market. This is what we need to see:

I do not want Office in Linux. WTF for? Microsoft must JUST PLAIN ADOPT AND SUPPORT ODF in their products.

Stop complaining and derailing the standards adoption.YES, they can do it and NO, they don´t want to support a truly open document format, since one of the factors for MS survival is vendor Lock-IN.

Open and Document your server protocols so Windows can work decently with SAMBA, that is one of the reasons why the European Union is about to fine Microsoft daily.

I don’t know why but this reminds me of game theory. The FLOSS-world should just go TID for TAD in regard to microsoft. Offer initial cooperation (guess we did that) and then react to hostility with counter hostility, react to niceness with niceness but nontheless forget quickly.

Hostility vs. hostility: Well I guess we could call it flamewars Other than that there’s the FSF reacting to FUD with counter-FUD etc.

Niceness vs. niceness: There was not very much niceness to react upun but as pointed out in the first post we’re getting some now. Time to react.

Forgetting quickly: This is what we might want to work on.

Of course the FLOSS-world is made up of very different people and oppinions so it’s not all that easy. Maybe a general trend is what we could hope for. However personally I cannot forget that easiely because after all it’s Microsoft we’re dealing with here

“We’re talking about a company which gave its customers Windows 9x for years when NT was right there, it just wasn’t snappy like those Macs (don’t get me started on Mac before OS X, I’m not happy with them either).

1. NT was NOT right there… during the Win9x “Hayday” the NT kernel was still in its infancy. What would have happened if MS released NT4.0 to the home user? LOL… At least Win9x had plug and Pray…opps…Play. and ok multimedia support. NT4?… No Plug and Play and shotty Multimedia support. MS billed NT4 as a BUSINESS OS. Windows 2000 was suppose to be release as a home OS too, but was scrapped because the multimedia support and the DirectX API was not 100% there at release. (This was fixed in later Service Packs and DirectX drivers) They SMARTLY waited until XP (NT5.1) to bring the NT Kernel to the home.

I feel this was a SMART move and was not done to be JERKS to its customers. Can you imagine the outcry if MS dropped Win9X and went fully into NT in the NT4.0 days??? JEEBUS! (What?!! I can use my sound card?, What? I can’t play that game?, What? I can’t use this Win16 app?) etc etc etc etc etc etc.

I hope, me being an administrator at a school district, that MS does work for better interopertibility. We use a mixed Linux/Win2003/WinXP environment and the cross working of AD and OpenLDAP is a BEAR!

An example of how well Windows interoperates: I had a linux install on a 200GB HD, and on a whim I decided to install a copy of Windows XP. First attempt: I boot into the installer, and it doesn’t recognize the partition table on the 200GB HD. I add a 80GB HD and try again, telling it to format the spare HD. The result? It begins formatting the 200GB HD, and I’m forced to hard reset to save my data. It took me all night to salvage my data (I didn’t have a rescue disk ready, and it took forever to find a blank CD-R).